Most Faithful
by Doors
Summary: Bellatrix Lestrange – they'd remember her as the Dark Lord's most faithful, she always said. Barty doesn't believe that, not for a moment.


**Title:** Most Faithful  
**Pairing:** Bellatrix/Barty  
**Prompts:** "LV might have taught Bella the Dark Arts, but she taught Barty" and "Love is not always like a fairy tale"  
**Notes:** This is a Christmas gift for Mrs Bella Riddle but it's so late it's more of a mid-January gift and I'm really sorry about that.

* * *

He'd woken up one morning in Bellatrix Lestrange's bed. The first thing he'd noticed was the curtains. It had seemed strange, at the time, that he'd be aware of the curtains before he was aware of the woman still sleeping beside him, but looking back on it, he supposed it had been the first time he'd ever awoken in anyone else's bed.

They had been purple, the curtains. Dark and thick and made of silk and hanging right down to the floor. The ends of them brushed the carpet – it was nearly the same colour, and strewn with items of clothing discarded the night before. It took Barty a moment, lying in a haze, to remember why and how he was there, and then he sat up so fast his head hurt and pulled his knees to his chin and wondered what his father would say.

He had become uncomfortable aware, suddenly, that he was not wearing any clothes, and the sheets felt soft against his bare skin, and a little too warm. He couldn't tell if they were wet or not, but looking back, they must have been – soaked with sweat and all manner of other things. It was not his father's house. In his father's house, no-one slept in the nude. Barty slept in shirts and long johns, and God forbid anything should be left to lie on the floor.

God forbid anyone should imagine _sex_ existed at all.

Barty supposed his father must have had it at some point, because he was here, after all. But his father had probably called it '_making love_' (though he didn't love anything but himself), and he would have showered afterwards and got dressed and probably acted as though it hadn't happened.

That morning, with the dawn breaking and spilling over the tops of the curtains and turning the room a shimmering pink, Barty had felt as though he was living in a haze – and it was a happy sort of haze, and he hadn't been happy in so long. His father's house felt a million miles away – in another world, even, and it was so easy to pretend, for a moment, before Bellatrix stirred beside him, that this was his house, and this was his wife.

And she was beautiful. She was frowning, and her lipstick was smeared across her mouth, and her hair was sticking out in clumps, her eyes dark and heavy, but she was the most beautiful woman he had seen in his life, and the only woman he wanted to be with. She was the only woman he had been with, really, and he wasn't quite sure what to say to her. They sat for a moment in silence, and then Bellatrix spoke.

"Put some clothes on."

Barty blinked at her. "Oh. All right."

"Why'd you stay all night?" she asked without looking at him, pushing the bedclothes off and stepping onto the floor. She wasn't wearing anything, either – her body was all pale curves like he remembered, and he swallowed. He had thought about her, before last night – a lot.

"Well, I thought... I thought..."

"You thought? Spit it out, lad." She wasn't looking at him, still – she was pulling on her robes, and swept the curtains open with one wave of her wand. The cold light of day came rushing in, and Barty was suddenly back in a reality in which his father's house was barely thirty miles away, and in which Bellatrix Lestrange's husband would be returning to his home shortly. "Well?" demanded Bellatrix, and Barty looked away, scowling a little.

"I _thought_ things had... changed."

"Changed?" said Bellatrix blankly, and tilted her head. "Changed?" she repeated, then cackled. "Oh, Barty. Oh, little _baby_." She clambered onto the edge of the bed and crawled towards him, hand outstretched to squeeze his cheeks. He turned away, and Bellatrix laughed, and sat back. "It changes nothing," she said, suddenly cold again. "I like you, Barty, I do. I think your devotion to the cause and to the Dark Lord is most admirable. And I'm quite content for us to continue with little night-time romps like this, if that's what you want. But I want you out of house before I wake up and I don't want you to think it means you are to be less devoted to our sessions of study."

"Study?" spat Barty.

"Yes, study. Of course. I am the teacher, and you, the student. Or have you forgotten? Do you think I'm your _girlfriend_ now? ...Have you ever _had_ a girlfriend, Barty?"

Barty pushed the covers from himself and pushed himself away from her. He got up, and he got dressed, and said bitterly, "And just how do you think your husband will feel about this?"

"Rodolphus?" squealed Bellatrix, and again she threw her head back and cackled. "Oh, no, _please_ don't tell _Rodolphus_! Oh, Barty, you are funny." Barty blinked at her. "Listen, you continue playing the part of the faithful student, which you are, and I will continue to play the part of the faithful wife, which I am not, but we shall both be faithful servants to the Dark Lord. And, Barty, that's all that matters, really." She looked at him earnestly then, her eyes wide – Barty thought now that it was perhaps the only earnest look she had ever given him.

Bellatrix Lestrange – they'd remember her as the Dark Lord's most faithful, she always said. Ha. She was certainly talented, and if he knew what love was he might have said he was a little bit in love with her. But she didn't care for him, not really, not beyond their 'study sessions'. She cared only for the Dark Lord – and she was right to do so, Barty thought. He had come to realise, over years bound up in his father's house and kept silent to the world, that the Dark Lord was the only thing worth caring for. He had hated Bellatrix that morning, but only briefly. She had taught him, aside from her lessons in the Dark Arts, the most valuable lesson of all. She had taught him loyalty. She had taught him that the Dark Lord was worth living for. Was worth dying for. Was worth killing for.

Barty had lost count of the lives he was responsible for taking, and he had almost lost his own mind watching himself, as though from outside his own body, torture the Aurors to insanity. But the Dark Lord would make it all better. He would make everything worthwhile. When he saw what Barty had done for him, and how he had proven his loyalty, he would make him his right-hand man. They were similar, the Dark Lord and he, and Barty knew his time would come. The student, he thought, had surpassed his teacher, who was still pining away for her master, no doubt, and scratching the walls in Azkaban. When the Dark Lord rose again, Barty would be the one who was there, the one who'd help him rise –there by his side, the Dark Lord's _most_ faithful.


End file.
